stuck in the necks of black bottles, and provided with abundance of liquor, tobacco, tin pannikins, and clay-pipes, sat twelve or thirteen ill-favoured fellows, any one of whom a prudent man would, I am very sure, have rather trusted with a shilling than a sovereign.  The unfortunate doctor, pale and sepulchral as the death he evidently dreaded to be near at hand, was sitting propped up in a rude arm-chair; and Ransome, worse, I thought, than when I had seen him a few weeks previously, was reclining on a chest, in front of which stood his wife and daughter in a condition of feverish excitement.  There at first appeared, from the temper of the roisterers, to be no cause for any very grave apprehension; but the aspect of affairs soon changed, and I eagerly availed myself of a suggestion of Dick Redhead’s, and gave directions that preparation for its execution should be instantly and silently commenced.  The thought had struck Dick when perched up there alone, and naturally looking about for all available means of defence, should he be discovered.  Let me restate my position and responsibilities.  It was my duty to rescue Lee, the agent of the Customs, from the dangerous predicament in which he was placed; and the question was, how to effect this without loss of life.  It would, no doubt, have been easy enough to have turned up one or two of the loose planks, and have shot half the smugglers before they could have made their escape.  This, however, was out of the question, and hence the adoption of Dick’s proposal.  It was this:  in the loft where we lay, for stand upright we could not, there was, amongst several empty ones, one full cask, containing illicit spirits of some kind, and measuring, perhaps, between forty and fifty gallons.  It was wood-hooped, and could be easily unheaded by the men’s knives, and at a given signal, be soused right upon the heads of the party beneath, creating a consternation, confusion, and dismay, during which we might all descend, and end the business, I hoped, without bloodshed.

This was our plan, and we had need to be quick about it, for, as I have said, the state of affairs below had suddenly changed, and much for the worse.  A whistle was heard without; the front entrance was hastily unbarred, and in strode Wyatt, Black Jack, and well did he on this occasion vindicate the justice of his popular designation.  Everybody was in a moment silent, and most of those who could stood up.  ‘What’s this infernal row going on for?’ he fiercely growled.  ’Do you want to get the sharks upon us again?’ There was no answer, and one of the men handed him a pannikin of liquor, which he drank greedily.  ‘Lee,’ he savagely exclaimed, as he put down the vessel, ‘you set out with us in half an hour at latest.’

‘Mercy, mercy!’ gasped the nerveless, feeble wretch:  ‘mercy!’

’Oh, ay, we’ll give you plenty of that, and some to spare.  You, too, Ransome, prepare yourself, as well as your dainty daughter here’—­He stopped suddenly, not, it seemed, checked by the frenzied outcries of the females, but by a renewed and piercing whistle on the outside.  In the meantime, our fellows were getting on famously with the hoops of the huge spirit-cask.  ‘Why, that is Richards’ whistle,’ he exclaimed.  ‘What the furies can this mean?  Unbar the door!’